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As we reflect on celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, we recognize that we wouldn't have made it here without the support of our members and patrons (that's you!). We’ve been asking people to share their Wex stories—what they were up to 25 years ago, their favorite Wexner Center moments, how the center has impacted them, what they see as the center's role in the community—and the responses have been rolling in.

Do you have a Wexner Center story? Share it here, and you just might see it featured here on our blog or in our print publications.

"I can't imagine my undergraduate experience being the same without the Wexner Center for the Arts. I feel like I've been spoiled these past three years with all of the magnificent exhibits the Wex has put on. As a rising senior, I could not be more excited to celebrate the center's 25th year anniversary with world-renowned works from Les Wexner's private collection."

As we reflect on celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, we recognize that we wouldn't have made it here without the support of our members and patrons (that's you!). We’ve been asking people to share their Wex stories—what they were up to 25 years ago, their favorite Wexner Center moments, how the center has impacted them, what they see as the center's role in the community—and the responses have been rolling in.

Do you have a Wexner Center story? Share it here, and you just might see it featured here on our blog or in our print publications.

I worked at the Wexner as a GA and it was truly one of the best places I've ever been professionally—I made some of the best friends (that I still have to this day). Overall, it was such a phenomenal place to learn, while getting real-world experience as a student at Ohio State.

As we reflect on celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, we recognize that we wouldn't have made it here without the support of our members and patrons (that's you!). We’ve been asking people to share their Wex stories—what they were up to 25 years ago, their favorite Wexner Center moments, how the center has impacted them, what they see as the center's role in the community—and the responses have been rolling in.

Do you have a Wexner Center story? Share it here, and you just might see it featured here on our blog or in our print publications.

When I was an undergraduate student at OSU, I worked at the front desk of the Wexner Center. I wanted to learn more about contemporary artists, with the hope of someday calling myself an artist (which is now true). One day, I was working and internationally acclaimed artist, Ernesto Neto, was downstairs, putting the finishing touches on his gorgeous installation. He came up the stairs, with a giant smile, and gave me a thumbs-up. Then he walked out the door, and left for the day. For me, it was a transformative moment. He was a real person, and was visibly excited to see his work come to life after the long journey from Brazil. I was not learning about him from an art history class or seeing images of his work in a book. I could see his work for myself and he was right in front of me. You could feel that he was thrilled and proud of his work. It made me realize that so much of success is believing in yourself, being excited about good ideas, and doing the work to make your dreams happen. That interaction inspired me to work on my own art, and to listen to my own desire to be an artist.

Laurie Anderson spoke with Director of Performing Arts Chuck Helm this summer about her collaboration with Kronos Quartet. Here is the full interview to whet your appetite for the performance of Landfall on October 11.

Chuck Helm: Well Laurie, thanks for taking time to do this. We’re presenting Landfall as one of the highlights of our 25th Anniversary Season. Last winter I was out in the Bay Area and I was at a dinner with David Harrington and the members of Kronos Quartet, who I’ve known for a long time. I was chatting with David about our plans to bring Landfall to the Wex and he said to me—I was sort of astonished—“You know, I first met Laurie Anderson backstage at the Wexner Center, and that was at the dedication event at the center in the fall of 1989.”

Laurie Anderson: That’s hilarious! Yep, that’s true.

CH: He said “We met backstage. I even said to her then, we need to collaborate on something.”

LA: We finally got down to it for your anniversary.

CH: Were you aware of Kronos at that time?

LA: Of course. It’s hard to remember when the art and music worlds were smaller than they are now. But they used to be quite tiny, and you kind of knew everybody in them. Now it’s just a corporate industry. It’s wild.

CH: When did you reconnect with Kronos and decide to do Landfall?

LA: It must have been about three years ago when the idea first came up, and because their schedule was so crazy and they’re so busy all the time, we had very little time to get together and even talk about it. But when we did, it was very fast, and I thought, this is great! These guys are really together. So what we did were a lot of…I would say, workshops. I wrote a lot of material for processed viola, and then we’d play a few phrases, and they would immediately take all of the processing and break it up into quartet parts. I didn’t really have to do that much for this work. Although I worked a lot with Jacob [Garchik, an arranger/transcriber for Kronos since 2006], who’s really a wonderful collaborator as well, and who helped me figure out how to write scores for them, because there’s a special way that they like to see things.

CH: I was curious about that because you often work with other musicians. Were there particular challenges in arranging this for string quartet?

LA: It was definitely a challenge for both of us. I didn’t realize this until we played Landfall for the first time in public and David said, “you know, we’ve never been in a situation where we didn’t have the score until like three days before.” I was like, really? He said, “but it was so easy to play.” I said, well, that’s because these are all things that you played, and I just recorded them and arranged them in different ways. I think that made it a lot easier, because—and it was really true—it was stuff that had come from them, essentially. There’s a lot of improvisation in this work, even in the written parts. I would ask them to play these things, and they would come up with ideas that got incorporated into the work. So it was a very free process, and I really really enjoyed working with them, so much. We recorded last spring and I’ve just been listening over the last couple of days to the recording, which is really beautiful. I’m so happy with it.

CH: That record is slated to come out on Nonesuch later this year. When can we expect to see that?

LA: The quartet is weighing in about which takes they want to use, and I’m going to be mixing, I think, in Iceland. We’ll see what happens with that part of it. I’m very very proud of that recording. Working with them is beyond fun; it’s just like, a crazy amount of fun.

CH: Storytelling has always been a very central part of your work and certainly is in Landfall. What themes are you exploring in this work?

LA: A series of short stories about loss and disappearance, sort of inspired by Hurricane Sandy, which happened when I was just finishing and choosing which stories to use. I lost pretty much all of my stuff in storage in my basement with Sandy. At first it felt so devastating, and then I realized, wait a second, when is the time I’m going to bring up 30 slide projectors connected by MIDI, set them up, and have them do something—and the answer is absolutely never. And, so, in a way, it began a whole series of things for me during which I just began to throw stuff away. I just realized: I don’t need this, I don’t need that, and this is not something I’m ever going to care about again, and it was very, very freeing. So it’s also a work about trying to be free.

CH: You’ve long been known for your embrace of technology, both in terms of integrating visuals with sound as well as expanding the range of your voice and your instruments, and Kronos has also always been quick to work with technology. Are there particular technological ideas or tools that you are using for Landfall?

LA: Well, I’m always adding to the rig that I’m using. For Landfall I’ve used a bunch of sampling and processing devices, and those are speedier than they used to be, so that’s really fun. I’m kind of the fifth wheel, over there with my piles of electronics and electronic viola and a different series of sounds. The things I’ll be using on stage will sound fairly similar to what I originally used in developing the piece, but they’ll be faster. So the sounds are developing while we’re playing the piece as well. They’re always kind of changing.

CH: Are you also controlling the digital processing for Kronos’s sound, or do they do that?

LA: Yes, I’m using it for them as well.

CH: You first premiered the work several years ago. Has Landfall evolved since then, or has it remained pretty much a set piece?

LA: Well, because there’s improv in it, it’s really evolving. Each time we play it, we play it differently, which is exciting to me. That’s what I hoped for, that they wouldn’t drag out the score and just play it. It’s very dynamic that way. It also has a big visual component, which is a kind of code that I wrote. Originally one of the things that they said was, “We’d like to tell stories with our instruments.” I was like, “Well, OK, good; I’m not sure how to do that!” But I figured out a very high-speed way for John [Sherba, Kronos violinist] to play the solo and generate text that is kind of frightening because it’s so one-on-one. Generally subtitles lag behind or sometimes even precede the sung or spoken text, and this is, like, dead on. You realize it’s in a whole different time frame. And to me that’s really exciting—but I’m a geek, so what can I say? But I think it’s very perceptible to people and unusual that there is this completely new relationship between sound and pictures.

There are also some really creaky sounds in Landfall. I worked with an Optigan, which is an old 1970s sampling [playback] keyboard, so there are lots of things that sound like ancient ice skating music from the 1930s, or maybe the 50s, let’s say, that it samples. So Landfall has these beautiful shabby sounds as well as glistening digital stuff—I love the combination of those kinds of elements. Kronos, of course, can enter either of those worlds—the creaky one or the glossy one—very quickly and naturally, so that’s been an incredible pleasure.

CH: Well, I’m sure that the recording will be fantastic, and it will be really great to have both you and Kronos back at the Wexner Center where you first met and…

LA: Yeah, that’s going to be a blast…

CH: …so we can see it with the visuals and experience it in full with our audience for our 25th anniversary. Thank you so much Laurie.

LA: Exactly. It’s the kind of thing you can’t put on a record. So, I’m looking forward to it too.

If you've followed our film program long enough you know that one of our guiding principles—heck, our pledge to you—is that we will do everything that we can to present works in the best possible format. Occasionally, especially with newer, independently produced and distributed work, this might mean a variety of video formats, including Blu-ray. But for repertory (think classic) titles, we really only consider two formats to be acceptable: DCP (Digital Cinema Package; what most theaters show these days) and actual film. Exceptions (and last-minute emergencies) are inevitable. For instance, during our Terry Zwigoff retrospective in October, we will be showing Bad Santa on Blu-ray because it is the only way the Director's Cut (Zwigoff's preference) is available. We'll also be showing Louie Bluie via digital video, as it's in much better condition than the original 16mm prints. And, during our recent Richard Linklater retrospective, we were worried we would have to show both Tape and Waking Life on DVD, but thankfully, some arm-twisting turned up 35mm prints. Still, in all but the rarest of exceptions, we strive to show rep titles on film or, increasingly DCP.

With this in mind, we were excited to be able to once again show Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm last week. We've shown it twice in the past in 70mm, so we thought we knew what to expect. Instead, we had an unprecedented couple of days that found us exhausting every contact and extracting every last drop of knowledge and experience from our tech team to get it on the screen, even if the first show was delayed by a day.

We were set to show the film on Thursday and Friday, August 28 and 29. The print arrived on Tuesday and upon its inspection, our projectionist Bruce Bartoo realized that the print had a DTS soundtrack and that the required DTS discs with the soundtrack were not with the print. This isn't that uncommon for older titles. Occasionally they come in a separate shipment. But when we contacted Warner Bros., they said there weren't any DTS discs. This was a problem. You see, 70mm film prints have either a magnetic soundtrack on the actual print or, with DTS, a code on the film that syncs with an external disc that provides the sound. With a 35mm print, a DTS print will also have an optical track so that if the DTS track is unavailable for whatever reason, it can default to the optical track and play without issue. For a 70mm print, however, it's the DTS disc or nothing and—as mentioned—the DTS discs were missing. We considered having a 70mm print with a magnetic track shipped overnight (at great expense), and we were set with that plan, but we decided to do a bit more research.

On Wednesday, we called two venues that had showed the print recently. They didn't have the discs, but the Music Box in Chicago suggested we call Datasat in Los Angeles. They are the main company that produces DTS discs and to our very welcome surprise the agreed to burn us new discs and to ship them overnight to us. Problem solved. There was much rejoicing in our department. But when the discs arrived Thursday morning, they didn't work. With less than 12 hours before the show (for which we had already sold around 150 tickets), we were sent scrambling.

Bruce, along with our engineers Steve Jones and Scott Austin, looked at our projection system to see if they could detect a problem. Nothing. In fact, we had played a number of titles with DTS tracks (but in 35mm) throughout the past month with no issues. Was it our sound system, the DTS player, the discs, or perhaps the 70mm sound readers on the projectors? Everything seemed to be fine. We brought in John Williamson from the nearby American Theatre Equipment Company for help. John has been a godsend to our program for decades. He's helped install equipment, guide decision-making, provide rare pieces of equipment often at the last minute, and help out in emergency situations like this one. (It's John in the truck at our Wex Drive-Ins, for those of you who may have peeked inside.) John came in and, along with Bruce, gave our system a top-to-bottom examination. Again, nothing. Panic set in. In a fit of insanity, we even purchased a Blu-ray of 2001, praying it wouldn't come to that profoundly distasteful end.

After hours of tinkering and tests and more thoughts of having the print with the mag track overnighted, John and Bruce concluded it had to be the discs. Bruce contacted Daniel Schulz and John contacted Karen Hultgren, both of Datasat. We figured it out. We had the wrong discs. They would overnight new discs but it was too late for our Thursday night show. We couldn't bring ourselves to show 2001 in Blu-ray, especially after touting our 70mm shows for the past couple of months, so, with much regret and hand-wringing, we decided to cancel our Thursday screening and add a Saturday show. (I have to add that our communications, box office, and house management departments handled this late-breaking decision and its impact on that night's guests with their usual grace, support, and professionalism.) We tried to get word of the change out as best we could via social media, but we did have a few disappointed folks show up that evening, and we offered refunds or exchanges along with our sincere apologies. We promised things would be fixed for the Friday and Saturday shows.

So, Friday morning the replacement discs arrived, Bruce popped them in the player and…they still didn't work. Now what?

After more consultation between Bruce, John, and the folks at Datasat, we finally realized the problem. We had been operating under the false assumption (a misinterpretation of lab notes on the print) that this was an older print, when in fact it was from 2010. The print we had was a unique one that required a slightly different model of DTS player than the one we had. Simple enough, we'd get a replacement. The problem is that with virtually every theater in the area converted to digital projection, there aren’t many DTS systems around. We tried calling a handful of local theaters to see if they might have one lying around. Nothing. John checked his warehouse. Nothing. John knew that Dennison University had one in their theater, but would they be using it over the weekend and, if not, would we be able to get a hold of them, drive to Granville, get the player, switch it in for our existing player (switching in an XD10 for a 6D, for those who really want to know), and test it in time for our 7 PM show? We got ahold of the very kind folks at Dennison and they very graciously said we could use their player for the weekend. John drove to Granville, pulled it out of their system, and drove the 45 minutes back to the Wexner Center. Time was of the essence. There was a lecture at 4:30 PM in our theater and once that began we wouldn't be able to do anything until around 6 PM. John arrived at the center, installed the new player (this makes it sound far too easy), and was able to do just enough testing by around 4:20 PM to confirm that, finally, the show would go on. It was worth the wait. The film looked great and sounded even better—much better, in fact, than the print with a magnetic track we showed a number of years ago. Those in attendance were thrilled to be able to see the film this way (someone even drove from Philadelphia!), and it’s very rewarding to get enthusiastic responses at the end of a film. We took some additional solace in the fact that we would never have known we had this problem unless this unusual set of circumstances lined up just the way that they did. If we had simply requested a replacement print with a mag track on Wednesday, we would never have discovered the lurking flaw in our system.

We offer this case study not to pat ourselves on the back (we’re too tired and stressed out) but to demonstrate how deeply committed we are to presenting films the way you (and we) expect: in the best possible formats. It also illustrates how increasingly difficult it will be to present actual film. Not only are film prints becoming less available, but the equipment to show the films will be harder and harder to maintain. Most presentations don’t involve anything remotely this difficult. We call a distributor, archive, or studio, inquire about print or DCP availability and condition, and they either have it or they don't, and it’s either available or it’s not. One or two emails or phone calls at most. But, occasionally, we’re presented with a challenge we’ve never seen before. And, truth be told, I think we all kind of enjoy it. (THANKS, JOHN!!!)